Friend v. Friend

The Transformation of Friendship--and What the Law Has to Do with It

Ethan J. Leib

The book controversially argues for the partial legal regulation of friendship.

Explains how friendship is both declining and transforming in contemporary America

Contrasts the legal regulation of marriage with the lack of regulation over friendship, and shows how increasingly informal society with more single people needs the benefits that friendship laws could offer

Friend v. Friend

The Transformation of Friendship--and What the Law Has to Do with It

Ethan J. Leib

Description

Friendship is one of our most important social institutions. It is the not only the salve for personal loneliness and isolation; it is the glue that binds society together. Yet for a host of reasons--longer hours at work, the Internet, suburban sprawl--many have argued that friendship is on the decline in contemporary America. In social surveys, researchers have found that Americans on average have fewer friends today than in times past.

In Friend v. Friend, Ethan J. Leib takes stock of this most ancient of social institutions and its ongoing transformations, and contends that it could benefit from better and more sensitive public policies. Leib shows that the law has not kept up with changes in our society: it sanctifies traditional family structures but has no thoughtful approach to other aspects of our private lives. Leib contrasts our excessive legal sensitivity to marriage and families with the lack of legal attention to friendship, and shows why more legal attention to friendship could actually improve our public institutions and our civil society. He offers a number of practical proposals that can support new patterns of interpersonal affinity without making friendship an onerous legal burden.

An elegantly written and highly original account of the changing nature of friendship, Friend v. Friend upends the conventional wisdom that law and friendship are inimical, and shows how we can strengthen both by seeing them as mutually reinforcing.

Friend v. Friend

The Transformation of Friendship--and What the Law Has to Do with It

Ethan J. Leib

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Who Is a Friend?2. Why Should Friendship Matter?3. The Family Analogy4. How Can the Law Matter? Friendship and Our Legal Institutions5. The Friend as a Fiduciary6. Friendships as Contracts--and Contracts as Friendships?7. The Trust ProblemConclusionAcknowledgements

Friend v. Friend

The Transformation of Friendship--and What the Law Has to Do with It

Ethan J. Leib

Author Information

Ethan J. Leib is Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law.

Friend v. Friend

The Transformation of Friendship--and What the Law Has to Do with It

Ethan J. Leib

Reviews and Awards

"Friend v. Friend is a fascinating and well-researched text that will undoubtedly spark lively discussion among law students and casual legal theorists alike. The book certainly belongs in any academic law library, and other libraries with strong legal theory collections should also consider its purchase. With seven well-organized chapters, a robust index, and extensive notes, Friend v. Friend succinctly introduces a valuable new way of thinking about friendship and the law." --Arlene I. Fletcher, Law Library Journal

"Should the law intervene in the world of friendship? In Friend v. Friend, Ethan Leib offers a provocative affirmative answer. With engaging style and illuminating arguments, Leib shows why and how the law and public policy can bolster some of our most vital intimate connections. Shattering misconceptions, the book pioneers a new vision of contemporary friendship." --Viviana A. Zelizer, Professor of Sociology, Princeton University, and author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy

"Ethan Leib has written a remarkable meditation not only on friendship, but also on the degree to which legal institutions should acknowledge the reality of friendships in a variety of different contexts. Sometimes this would have the effect of protecting friends against the intrusion of the state; other times, however, the state might be willing to enforce certain expectations of friendship upon their betrayal by someone now viewed as a 'false friend.' One need not agree with all of Leib's particular arguments in order to feel genuinely stimulated and challenged about something that is presumably important to all of us." --Sanford Levinson, Professor of Law, University of Texas Law School, and author of Testimonial Privileges and the Preferences of Friendship

"Ethan Leib persuasively argues for friendship's proper place in the law and, surprisingly, that the legal system can properly protect and nourish friendship's rich textures of intimacy and mutual engagement. Social scientists who have long considered friendship as inimical to all formality, certainly to law, are in for a bracing challenge. Leib's book is a model of clarity of thought, grace in argument and lucidity of style." --Allan Silver, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Columbia University

"Friend v. Friend is a vivid, broad-ranging, and always engaging essay on a subject whose importance is matched only by its prior neglect. Ethan Leib has made an insistently human and yet still practical intervention into a relation that lies at the center of every thriving social order and each flourishing individual life." --Daniel Markovits, Professor of Law, Yale Law School, author of A Modern Legal Ethics: Adversary Advocacy in a Democratic Age

"Leib's book ... [is] successful as a reflection on the complex relationship between law and friendship, and it will offer rewards to people interested in the sociology of friendship. A particularly fine chapter discusses the relationship between friendship and contract law, and the surprising degree of overlap between the two." --Eric A. Posner, The New Republic

"The book contains excellent references, is easy to read, and provides a first-rate index of its contents... Highly recommended." -CHOICE